” The calendar may still say summer, but old man winter barreled his way in to ruin the fun, dumping up to 20 inches of snow across the Rockies and sending temperatures plunging to as low as 10 degrees Fahrenheit in Wyoming, with wind chills — yes, wind chills — in the 20s as far south as Denver, Colorado, on Friday morning.

It’s not unusual to see snow in the Rocky Mountains or even in Denver in September, but the strength of this cold air mass, and the snow totals, were both noteworthy.

The snow caused major tree damage in Cody and Buffalo, Wyoming, where up to 10 inches fell on Wednesday night and Thursday. According to the National Weather Service, this was earliest recorded snowfall for Cody (by one day), where records date back to 1915. The temperature in Jackson, Wyoming, dropped to 18 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday morning. “

” Baby boomers may have provided the bulk of the productivity surge in this country during the past couple of decades, but now they’re retiring in unprecedented numbers. This is setting in motion a number of interesting scenarios.

Some retirees are still recovering from the Great Recession swoon. Many are concerned about the Social Security funding gap, and some need their nest eggs to stretch further because people are living longer than ever these days.

But for all retirees, choosing where to retire can be just as important as choosing when to retire.

As we saw last weekend, more than a dozen U.S. states tax Social Security income either at the federal rate or at rates based on their own formulas. In addition, sales tax, property tax, and a bevy of other costs can vary throughout the country. Thus some states let senior citizens hang on to more of their hard-earned cash than others do.

Thankfully, Bankrate has done the hard work for us. By using a number of factors that include tax burden, cost of living, access to healthcare, crime rate, and even weather, it has ranked the top states for senior citizens to retire in. According to Bankrate’s findings, here are the five best states for retirement, in ascending order: “

” The number of VA facilities under investigation after complaints about falsified records and treatment delays has more than doubled in recent days, the Office of Inspector General at the Veterans Affairs Department said late Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for the IG’s office said 26 facilities were being investigated nationwide. Acting Inspector General Richard Griffin told a Senate committee last week that at least 10 new allegations about manipulated waiting times and other problems had surfaced since reports of problems at the Phoenix VA hospital came to light last month.

The expanded investigations come as President Barack Obama’s choice to help carry out reforms at the Veterans Affairs Department was set to travel to Phoenix to meet with staff at the local VA office amid mounting pressure to overhaul the beleaguered agency.

Obama announced last week that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rob Nabors would be assigned to the VA after allegations of delayed care that may have led to patient deaths and a cover-up by top administrators in Phoenix. Similar claims have been reported at VA facilities in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Georgia, Missouri, Texas, Florida and elsewhere.”

” It’s time for Western states to take control of federal lands within their borders, lawmakers and county commissioners from Western states said at Utah’s Capitol on Friday.

More than 50 political leaders from nine states convened for the first time to talk about their joint goal: wresting control of oil-, timber -and mineral-rich lands away from the feds.

” It’s simply time,” said Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, who organized the Legislative Summit on the Transfer for Public Lands along with Montana state Sen. Jennifer Fielder. “The urgency is now.” “

” Utah House Speaker Becky Lockhart, R-Provo, was flanked by a dozen participants, including her counterparts from Idaho and Montana, during a press conference after the daylong closed-door summit. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee addressed the group over lunch, Ivory said. New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington also were represented.

The summit was in the works before this month’s tense standoff between Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management over cattle grazing, Lockhart said.

” What’s happened in Nevada is really just a symptom of a much larger problem,” Lockhart said.

Fielder, who described herself as “just a person who lives in the woods,” said federal land management is hamstrung by bad policies, politicized science and severe federal budget cuts.

“Those of us who live in the rural areas know how to take care of lands,” Fielder said, who lives in the northwestern Montana town of Thompson Falls.”

” A sudden lurch in a creeping landslide in the northwest Wyoming resort town of Jackson split a house in two and forced workers to abandon just-begun efforts to stabilize the hillside.

A huge crack in the ground that had opened up under the house a couple weeks ago shifted several feet downhill in less than a day, breaking off a room or two and leaving a door swinging above the precipice. Rocks and dirt tumbled down in an almost constant stream and a geologist warned much bigger chunks could fall. The ground had been moving at a rate of an inch a day.

“ As it starts to get moving, it will start to get faster,” George Machan, a landslide specialist consulting for the town, said at a town meeting Friday.

Still, Machan said the ground was unlikely to liquefy and collapse suddenly like the March 22 landslide in Oso, Wash., that killed 39 people.

More likely, large blocks of earth would tumble down piece by piece, he said, perpetuating the drawn-out threat to four homes on the hill and to two apartment buildings and four businesses below.”

” All Andy Johnson wanted to do was build a stock pond on his sprawling eight-acre Wyoming farm. He and his wife Katie spent hours constructing it, filling it with crystal-clear water, and bringing in brook and brown trout, ducks and geese. It was a place where his horses could drink and graze, and a private playground for his three children.

But instead of enjoying the fruits of his labor, the Wyoming welder says he was harangued by the federal government, stuck in what he calls a petty power play by the Environmental Protection Agency. He claims the agency is now threatening him with civil and criminal penalties – including the threat of a $75,000-a-day fine.

“ I have not paid them a dime nor will I,” a defiant Johnson told FoxNews.com. “I will go bankrupt if I have to fighting it. My wife and I built [the pond] together. We put our blood, sweat and tears into it. It was our dream.”

The government says he violated the Clean Water Act by building a dam on a creek without a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. Further, the EPA claims that material from his pond is being discharged into other waterways. Johnson says he built a stock pond — a man-made pond meant to attract wildlife — which is exempt from Clean Water Act regulations.

The property owner says he followed the state rules for a stock pond when he built it in 2012 and has an April 4-dated letter from the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office to prove it.

“ Said permit is in good standing and is entitled to be exercised exactly as permitted,” the state agency letter to Johnson said.

But the EPA isn’t backing down and argues they have final say over the issue. They also say Johnson needs to restore the land or face the fines.

Johnson plans to fight. “This goes a lot further than a pond,” he said. “It’s about a person’s rights. I have three little kids. I am not going to roll over and let [the government] tell me what I can do on my land. I followed the rules.”

” Support is mounting for a lawsuit that challenges New Jersey’s tight restrictions on handgun ownership and its high standard of “justifiable need” for carrying a weapon outside the home.

Nineteen states as well as the powerful National Rifle Association have joined the case’s plaintiff John Drake, who in his lawsuit claims he was denied a permit following a thwarted robbery attempt on his Sussex County business.

Drake lost his appeal before a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year and now a growing number of states, led by Wyoming, are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, claiming New Jersey was wrong when it determined that the business owner failed to prove “justifiable need” to carry a gun under state statute.

Drake’s suit also claims that his right to bear arms under the Second Amendment has been violated.”

” Campbell County sheriff’s officials say a 15-year-old boy fatally shot a man who was trying to abduct a woman in Wright.

The shooting happened Wednesday night.

Sheriff’s officials said Friday they had responded to reports of an attempted abduction at a home in Wright. They arrived to find 48-year-old Sammy Michael Fears, of Casper, wounded in the driveway. Fears died on the way to the hospital.”

” Ignoring congressionally-mandated boundaries set in 1905, the Environmental Protection Agency has turned the Wyoming town of Riverton over to two Indian tribes.

In a surprising decision, officials at the EPA, the Department of the Interior and the Justice Department, designated the land the property of the Wind River Tribes, according to The Daily Caller.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead petitioned the EPA to reverse the decision, and vowing not to abide by the order, and pledging to fight it in court if necessary.

“ My deep concern is about an administrative agency of the federal government altering a state’s boundary and going against over 100 years of history and law,” Mead said in a statement. “This should be a concern to all citizens because, if the EPA can unilaterally take land away from a state, where will it stop?” “

The precedent has been set . Through the auspices of the Obama administration Congress has been ruled of no consequence . Now we have State appointed bureaucrats ignoring settled law and the legitimate authority of the legislative branch in pursuit of their own agenda . Rule of law ? What’s that ?

” U.S. Senator Mark Udall’s younger brother, who had been missing for more than a week, was found dead on Wednesday in a Wyoming mountain range, but no foul play was suspected, authorities said.

The body of James “Randy” Udall, 61, who had been the subject of a search since failing to return from a week-long back-country hike, was discovered in a remote mountain area, Sublette County Sheriff Dave Lankford said.”

” ObamaCare is not popular. It was not popular when it was enacted, and it has not become any more popular now, especially as people have begun to see the fall-out from this regulatory nightmare, such asskyrocketing insurance costs. Many states, which saw voters respond to ObamaCare by electing Republican legislatures in 2010, subsequently enacted bills exempting them from ObamaCare’s costly and limiting provisions. Unfortunately, Obama does not care.

In an interview with The New American, John Doak, Oklahoma’s Insurance Commissioner, reported that he received a letter from Gary Cohen, who is the Deputy Administrator and Director of the federal Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (“CCIIO”). In that letter, Cohen stated unequivocally that the federal government will impose ObamaCare regulations on insurance companies operating inside Oklahoma. Politico reports that Obama’s administration has sent similar letters to Missouri, Wyoming, and Texas.”

” If you’ve ever felt the pain at the pump from filling up your tank and wanted to decry big oil, your anger would be misplaced.

That’s because a larger and larger chuck of change out of every gallon of gas you buy is tax going to the government.

Earlier this year, Wyoming increased its tax per gallon from 14 cents to 24 cents, the first increase the state has implemented in 15 years. The increased revenue is expected to raise $47.4 million for highway work, and goes into effect in July.

Governors of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan and Vermont have also proposed raising the consumption tax on placed on gas. The state legislature in New Hampshire will hold a hearing Thursday to considering phasing in a 15-cent-per-gallon increase.”

” Alabama is the most “conservative” state in the U.S., with roughly 50 percent of its residents “identifying their ideology as conservative,” trailed closely by North Dakota and Wyoming (both 48.6 percent), according to a recent survey by Gallup.”

” Faced with the prospect of new federal gun restrictions, the Wyoming House gave initial approval Wednesday to bills that sponsors say would exempt guns in the state from new regulations while possibly taking the fight to criminals who might choose to attack public schools.

The House voted in favor of a bill that would seek to block the federal government from restricting assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. It amended the bill to specify that federal officials who tried to enforce any ban would be subject to state misdemeanor charges instead of felony charges.”

” The bill co-sponsored by state Sen. Don Shooter, four other senators and several members of the House of Representatives would bar enforcement of new federal laws affecting semi-automatic firearms or high-capacity magazines. It also makes any federal official trying to enforce such laws guilty of a felony and allows the state Attorney General to defend anyone prosecuted for violating federal gun laws if the gun was made in Arizona, among other provisions.

Wednesday’s Senate Public Safety Committee debate pitted minority Democrats who believe the bill is unconstitutional against Republicans opposed to what they call an overreaching federal government. An identical bill has been introduced in the House, which also has seen several other gun-related bills introduced since the session began Jan 14.”

” A bill proposed by 13 Republican senators in Michigan would seek to sidestep any new potential federal regulations regarding guns by granting an exception to any such laws for firearms made in the state itself. The bill would also exempt ammunition and gun accessories that were made in Michigan from federal regulation, according to reports by the Detroit Free Press and other media outlets on Friday.

The bill is scheduled for consideration by a state Senate committee this coming Wednesday. Some legal experts have already stated that the bill, if passed, may well be more of a “symbolic” gesture by state Republicans than a binding piece of legislation, according to the Detroit Free Press report.

According to a website that tracks copies of the “Firearms Freedom Act,” some version of the bill has already been introduced in approximately 22 states. An additional eight states have already passed their own version of the bill, including Tennessee, Montana, Idaho, South Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Arizona, and Utah.”

” A movement to stop unconstitutional violations of gun rights by refusing to enforce unjust laws is slowly gaining momentum.

Last week, we saw the positive news of a small town Chief of Police in Pennsylvania who is proposing an ordinance to ‘preserve the 2nd Amendment’ and nullify any and all policies or attempts at enforcement from the federal, state or local level that violate the right to keep and bear arms.

Now, as predicted, others are modeling legislation on this same, or at least similar, grounds.

Members of Wyoming’s state government are introducing bills to uphold the 2nd Amendment as well. K2Radio.com reports:

Several Wyoming lawmakers are proposing legislation designed to protect gun-owners from any potential federal firearm ban. The “Firearms Protection Act” bill, introduced this week, would make any federal law banning semi-automatic firearms or limiting the size of gun magazines unenforceable within the state’s boundaries. “

“An attack on Friday at a college in Wyoming left three people dead, including the alleged attacker. The assailant used a bow and arrow and a knife and, despite the “gun-free campus” policy, was still, nonetheless, able to kill.

How many more people have to die before society can just accept that this world is filled with dangerous people and that guns, when placed in the proper hands of responsible citizens, can greatly aid in the decline of senseless mayhem?

The characters and a few details always change, but the story remains the same. A student goes crazy and kills people. People wonder why, though there is never an answer more explanative than, “Some people are just crazy.” ”

If we ever get a decent government we could give the Saudi’s the boot .

” The Green River Formation, a largely vacant area of mostly federal land that covers the territory where Colorado, Utah and Wyoming come together, contains about as much recoverable oil as all the rest the world’s proven reserves combined, an auditor from the Government Accountability Office told Congress on Thursday.”

Yes , you read that correctly , ” as much recoverable oil as all the rest the world’s proven reserves combined “